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Renaissance plans four Cook Inlet wells Higher oil prices prompt independent to return to finicky Northern Lights prospect in the waters around North Cook Inlet unit Eric Lidji Petroleum News
Renaissance Alaska is permitting four offshore exploration wells in Cook Inlet between now and the end of next year, according to filings with the state.
All of the proposed wells would be on the west side of upper Cook Inlet and would be drilled sequentially over the next 18 months.
The first would be North Middle Ground Shoal State No. 1, in the North Middle Ground Shoal gas field in Trading Bay.
The remaining three wells surround the ConocoPhillips-operated North Cook Inlet unit east of the village of Tyonek. Northern Lights No. 1 and Northern Lights No. 2 would sit to the south on state leases set to expire at the end of the year. Northwest Cook Inlet State No. 1 would be north of the unit on a state lease not set to expire until November 2009.
Higher prices make prospect worth a try Those three wells would attempt to delineate the Northern Lights prospect, the most recent name for a prospect oil companies have long tried to develop.
The prospect previously went by Tyonek Deep and Sunfish back when ARCO and Phillips attempted to develop the field in the late 1990s. The companies drilled 17 wells and deemed 15 as productive for oil, with eight testing at initial rates of about 3,600 barrels per day from three zones.
Back then the price of crude oil was $10 a barrel and the companies delayed and then ultimately dropped the program despite a series of very encouraging well results. Today, crude oil is above $130 a barrel, making a return to the field seem logical.
Previous estimates of the prospect suggest the field could contain between 111 million and 358 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Renaissance principal Mark Landt oversaw several key wells in that program when he worked in the Cook Inlet as a land manager for ARCO in the early to mid-1990s. Landt returned to the prospect in 2003 working for the independent Prodigy Alaska, but the company needed partners and a jack-up rig to get the exploration program off the ground.
When that project fell apart, the leases got passed around again. Renaissance acquired them in 2006 with the financial support of the Canadian company ARC Financial Corp.
Today, Renaissance is one of several independent companies looking to get time on a jack-up rig headed for Cook Inlet. The rig could be used to drill several offshore prospects situated on a long anticline in the region that touches Escopeta’s Kitchen unit, Pacific Energy’s Corsair unit and ConocoPhillips’ legacy North Cook Inlet unit.
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